The 114th day

In today’s stressful world, every individual feels depressed once in a while. For some, it is short-termed while for some it becomes a part of their life. It is a common belief that the greatest number of stressed-out people are between the age of 20 to 30 years because it is the time when an individual starts his/her career & many a times life is unfair too. But what if a person with all the success & prosperity falls in depression. Seems unthinkable but is totally possible.

This is the story of a mother (Rukmini Haseja) and her only son (Jimmy Haseja). Earlier Mrs. Haseja was a vibrant woman with a very happy soul and a very broad-minded perspective towards life. Change being the only constant, she lost her husband in the 1993 bomb blasts and her world came to a standstill. She was left only with her son to look upon as she had lost all the trust in humanity. She always felt a void in her heart created by the death of her husband but also, she had a reason to live in this insensitive world, her son. Jimmy was a fun-loving guy with a craze for parties and loved to explore every single aspect of life. On completion of his graduation, he got a well-paid IT job in Bengaluru and against his mother’s decision he went for it. Although, he knew after his father's demise his mother has being a very reserved woman who never talked to anyone expect him, he wanted to escape free & start a new life in Bengaluru. He left his mother alone.

Starting a new life in Bengaluru, he was happy as he was not answerable to anyone. On the other hand, Mrs. Haseja was in constant unheard pain. She used to call him each day to ask him what he did for the entire day and how was life in the new city. He was the only one for her to share the pain, joys and everything she felt each day. But Jimmy was getting irritated with these calls. After almost eight months, he started ignoring the calls. He was more than happy and did not care much about what his mother going through back in Mumbai. For his mother, Jimmy was the only hope left in her life but now, even that hope seemed to be vanishing.  Not talking to her son was like not breathing in fresh air. Her entire world was turning upside down. It was like she was losing the only reason she had to live.

She wanted to share basic human emotions with someone just to release that emotional baggage on her shoulders. She started writing letters and she wrote these letters as if she was having a conversation with her son. I know you must be thinking that she is a psycho but deep down we all know that we all do this weird thing of talking with oneself. These letters were not just papers but they were her feelings she wanted to share with Jimmy. This thing happened for almost 113 days and she had 113 letters by her side all filled with her feelings, a mom and her son would discuss. On the 114th day, something happened, and she died leaving all those letters behind. His son was immediately called and in the postpartum, it was not like she died of a heart attack or some mental trauma. It was a natural death like god came and took away her soul.  Her son got the letters and he started reading it. He was imagining what his mother was going through each day and it was like a movie running in front of him but this time it was real life portraying the many things she always wanted to say. Her entire pain was in front of his eyes but there was no chance of undoing things. But she never wrote a letter for that last day, the 114th day. What happened on that day? What was she feeling? What were the things she wanted to say? and these questions will always remain unanswered for her son. And He has to live with that for his entire life of not knowing the unhuman facts behind his mother’s death.

So just have at least a little talk every now and then with your loved ones. God knows that might be the last call.